Wednesday, 25 August 2010

I've been painting flowers, something I haven't done for a couple of years. I'd forgotten how quickly they change, coming into full bloom and then losing vitality and falling. That's to be expected, and the different types take different times - the sweet peas brought by a visitor lasted three days, if that. Even roses change every few hours, going through a process when you think they've opened fully but they continue to get bigger.

This makes painting them difficult to fit into an already busy schedule. Last time I did a series of flower sketches I used to come home from work reasonably early to catch a couple of hours of light, it being high summer. At the moment my painting practice is more to do an hour or so several days a week.

I quite like the idea that if something unexpected turns up I can rearrange my schedule to paint it before it disappears. The practice was a bit different, as I ran out of time with the roses and am going to have to finish them from a photograph. With both of these pictures I started with a very quick charcoal outline and painted some rough colours in to cover the whole canvas. Then when I returned the next day I could get more detail - working with the fact that the flowers had changed drastically overnight. Another time it might make more sense to get a more detailed alla prima painting done on day one, and maybe even several colour sketches over several days, but as I said, I am still a bit out of practice.

Tuesday, 17 August 2010

It's great in my head...I can write.I can't write.I can write.I can't write.I wonder if I've got any email?I can't write.I can write.I'm going to put the kettle on.... and so on.

I am currently trying to finish a novel draft. The first ten or so chapters were more or less OK, bar a few minor continuity errors; the next five were just about hanging together as a coherent development of what went before. The final five: a random slurry of unconnected incidents, with a few notes here and there saying, "FIX this!" or, "Did that happen yet?" and so on. All of which messes with my always-fragile confidence.

And NaNoWriMo is only a few months away - and one of my ideas had to do with a resurrected Frida Kahlo hosting a gameshow. Maybe better pick one of the other six?

At least I can more or less paint at the moment, if technical exercises involving flowers counts as painting.